“We all have the same number of hours in a day. It’s how we use those hours that make the difference for the success or failure of our business careers. It’s far too easy for self-employed individuals to fall into unproductive patterns. And unless you’re working with others to establish a pace, there may not be anyone to point this out to you.” MORE ➲

“Looking at Polaroid pictures and touching traditional Polaroid cameras can only sow the seeds of eternal love into anybody who cares about visual seduction. Totally bored by four million digital images stored on your hard drive? It feels so incredibly good to taste, smell and touch real pictures without losing the instant effect. Polaroid simply changed our lives bringing back the fun to our photographic thinking and we believe it can and should do the same for you.” MORE ➲

“Here’s the thing: I really enjoy web-based list managers such as Remember the Milk, but for some reason, every time I log on to see my to-do list, I get sucked into the Mysterious Funnel of Time Wastery, which kind of defeats the whole purpose. Thus, my wholehearted re-embrace of the paper list.” MORE ➲

“For an inexpensive bicycle, there is no reason to pay a bicycle shop for professional packing. Also, you can save on shipping by partially disassembling the bike and shipping in a smaller box.” MORE ➲

“While searching the web for Holga related sites, galleries, auctions, sales, mods, tips and tricks, I discovered the Holgaroid—a Holga camera body equipped with a type 80 polaroid back. This Polaroid back has been modified to replace the Holga Film back.” MORE ➲

“From Wagner to Collective Soul, here’s a roundup of what historical murderers enjoyed listening to. One thing’s for certain: psychopathic killers seem to have an aversion to melody. Any murder suspects who happen to also be Belle and Sebastian fans automatically get ruled out at trial. (Thanks Fimoculous!) MORE ➲

“The Tour de France is the world’s best known cycling race, a three week long road race that covers a circuit of most areas around France, and sometimes neighbouring countries. The race is broken into stages from one town to another, each of which is an individual race. The time taken by cyclists to complete each stage becomes a cumulative total in order to decide the outright winner at the end of the Tour.” MORE ➲

“We are a community of people who see the value of paper as a medium for planning, productivity, creative expression, and exploring ideas. We encourage visitors to share advice and inspiration, and we love to see submissions for templates, kit images and story articles.” MORE ➲

“The first gallery project strictly dedicated to the immortal power of polaroid photography… Polaroids tell stories in an inimitable way. Stories so intense and intimate that upon viewing, the photographeroften isn’t the only one struck with this feeling of being (or having been) part of a scene. And chance leads the way.” MORE ➲

“Simple and understated, the Mix Tape is printed on a tan Hanes Beefy-T shirt. There’s space inside the image area to customize it and name your mix with a laundry marker if you like. Parties go a lot smoother with a clearly-labelled DJ.” MORE ➲

“Rails-to-Trails Conservancy is a nonprofit organization working with communities to preserve unused rail corridors by transforming them into trails, enhancing the health of America’s environment, economy, neighborhoods and people.” MORE ➲

“The PocketMod is a small book with guides on each page. These guides or templates, combined with a unique folding style, enable a normal piece of paper to become the ultimate note card. It is hard to describe just how incredibly useful the PocketMod is. It’s best that you just dive in and create one.” MORE ➲

“Peter Jones and longtime business partner Dennis Purcell, who met at Polaroid, over the years have developed technology for color meters for commercial photography and film, and invented an architectural model camera that Polaroid, once a leading player in the photography business, licensed and produced. Now at Boston-based Tenebraex–where Jones is president and Purcell is senior scientist–the two have taken their color technology knowledge into both the dark night and the digital world of color-coded data.” MORE ➲

“The book deals mainly with the processes to the GTD system which include clearing your mind (and living space) of useless clutter, organizing it, and storing it in appropriate places, and reviewing it on a consistent basis. On the surface, it’s nothing too revolutionary. Today’s post will be focusing on the business of setting up an appropriate system to collect all of your data, both physical and psychological. The workflow is a very powerful thing. It’s not a hard concept to grasp, yet it’s the hardest one to put into practice.” MORE ➲

“Alright. You’ve met her at a party, and she won’t stop talking about bands you’ve never heard of. She’s so cute, but you don’t know where to start… Now the most important weapon in your arsenal when it comes to conquering the Indie Rock Girl is the mix tape. You should maybe wait until the second date to give it to her, but you’ve GOT to make one. And it’s got to be perfect.” MORE ➲

“Here’s a quick list of Polaroid cameras separated into categories to denote which battery type(s) they use. This may be of particular use for those of you who may have a classic Polaroid folding pack camera, as it’s difficult to keep straight which battery type goes with which camera models.” MORE ➲

“Legend has it that sometime in the mid-1960s one of Polaroid’s research photographers inadvertenly left a Polaroid negative face down on a countertop, later picked it up, and found an image had transferred to the counter. He and several of his colleagues began to play with the process until Polaroid founder Dr. Edwin Land found out about it and sternly discouraged this deviant activity. And so Pandora’s box was closed …. for the time being.” MORE ➲

I guess we oughta link to the originator of GTD, huh? “Widely recognized as the world’s leading productivity experts, we’ve shown corporate giants, major institutions, small businesses, and more than half a million people a smarter way to work and live.” MORE ➲

It’s called runningmap.com, but of course it’ll work just fine if you try to calculate the distance of your bikes routes and rides: “This web site allows you to calculate distances by simply clicking a route on a map.” MORE ➲

“…every month a mixtape shows up in my mailbox. Every month it comes from a different stranger. Meanwhile, every month I make a mixtape and send it out to an altogether different stranger. This is the International Mixtape Project, a growing non-community of nearly 100 strangers sharing music in the form of original mixtapes. The Project itself is not especially complicated or revolutionary, but it is an interesting and cherished part of my everyday musical experience.” MORE ➲

“Distractions as a whole are a huge drain on every aspect of who we are. It takes our focus away from what we should be doing – our tasks, goals and purpose. This is why we have to eliminate them from our lives if possible! Personally, I find if I was to indulge in a distraction, a hour could go by and before I know it, I’d blow away an entire time box. Generally, this makes me feel drained and disappointed, not just in myself for having been weak but also about the lost opportunities and productive time I could have spent working on an article or researching a business venture.” MORE ➲

“Polaroid Corp. announced [November 7, 2006] the instant film and electronics manufacturer donated 1.5 million items of their corporate archives to the Harvard Business School Baker Library (HBS), according to an Oct. 24 Polaroid press release. The Polaroid collection is the single largest collection at the Harvard Business School Library. If all the shelves that house the Polaroid archives were placed next to each other, the collection would measure 4000 linear feet, equivalent to over 13 football fields.” MORE ➲

“We tend to think of recumbents as a ‘new’ type of bike, but as Solomon observed ‘there is no new thing under the sun.’ The recumbent has been around, in one form or another, since before the turn of the century. These pictures show that many features of ‘modern’ recumbent design have been around quite a while too!” MORE ➲

“It’s a distinct and painful memory shared by music lovers of a certain age. You spend a couple hours recording a wicked awesome mix tape for a friend, or a lover, or (most often) someone in the uncertain terrain between. You fill it with songs cunningly chosen to simultaneously bare your heart and play it cool. You nervously hand it over—’Yeah, no big deal, but I made you this.’ Two weeks later, you ask how much she loved it, and when she shrugs, you feel a hot flush of shame. Face it: Your mix tape sucks.” MORE ➲

“Bicycle repair and maintenance for the regular bike rider. No frills here but the basic stuff everybody needs to know that can help you save money and have fun. So from where ever you are on this planet, read on, fix it, get on your bike and ride!” MORE ➲

“Before the iPod and the random playlist of the MP3, there was the original: the mix tape. The advent of the cassette tape some 30 years ago made it possible for anyone with a tape deck and some tunes to be a record producer, mixing and matching songs, genres and bands. And become at-home record producers we did.” MORE ➲

Aboutdi4ent is an experiment. It's a collection of topical rotating wunderkammeresque distractions and delights. In other words, every month I'll choose four topics that I'd like to learn more about, or that I already find interesting and want to explore. Every weekday there will be a new post in each of the four topics. I decided to start it to give form and aim to my endless online wanderings. Plus I just like creating work for myself. So, I guess it's an online experiment in learning, linking, research and wasting time.